Mitt Romney is in trouble right now -- he's struggling, he's on the defensive, and even his allies are public recommending that he change strategy, which is never a good sign. In response to the bad news -- particularly to a Politico story in which Republican governors offer campaign advice to Romney -- BooMan writes this:
... Mitt Romney's utterly vacuous campaign is turning the nation's Republican governors into blathering idiots. I don't know what I'd say in their place, but that's sort of the point, What can you say? If you offer some advice like maybe Romney could release his tax returns and put this controversy to bed, you're forced to walk it back the next day. If you say that Romney should spell out his economic plans, you ignore that his economic plans poll so badly that the Democrats have decided that no one will believe them if they talk about them. If you suggest that Romney humanize himself by talking more about his personal life, you ignore that Romney is basically a straight-laced Clark Griswold who does weird things like strap a dog crate to the roof of his station wagon before he sets off on a lengthy vacation. If you tell him to defend his work at Bain Capital, you aren't taking account of the fact that he's had twenty years to try to do that as a candidate and has never succeeded. And you know in your heart that releasing his tax returns won't make the issue go away, but will destroy his candidacy in its crib....There's a lot of truth here -- but while it makes me think that Romney's going to lose, it also makes me think that we're going to derive the wrong lesson from a Romney loss if it does happen. We're going to think that Mitt Romney himself was the problem.
But who would have been better for the GOP to run? Is it even possible for a more appealing candidate to win a Republican nomination?
BooMan talks about how poorly the Romney economic plan polls when people learn the details -- the very details some GOP governors say Romney should be promoting. But any Republican candidate would have proposed a plan that made the rich richer and the poor poorer, that punished the have-nots and coddled the haves.
Any Republican would have engaged in a war on Planned Parenthood and abortion rights and minority voting and immigrants. Hell, every Republican who ever seemed to be in contention this year was as weird as Romney -- Newt Gingrich with his delusions of grandeur, Rick Santorum with his prurient interest in everyone's sex life, Herman Cain with his sleazy treatment of women, Michele Bachmann and Donald Trump with their crazy conspiratorialism, Rick Perry with his incessant God-bothering and simple-mindedness and odd response to prescription pharmaceuticals.
And all this is because being bizarre is, at this point, a requirement for making it to the top tier in the GOP. You have to have the same extreme economic views as the Koch brothers -- and you have to have at least some obsessive fixation on supposed Antichrists (people who have premarital sex in Santorum's case, evil liberals who oppose child labor in Gingrich's). It's the Republican Party, stupid. That's the problem.
So Romney may lose -- and the takeaway will be that he was a lousy presidential candidate, an unappealing guy with an unappealing life story. But the GOP is now built to elevate people like that. The Republican rank-and-file loves what the rest of us hate. It's more than a Romney problem -- it's a Republican problem.
And after Mitt, look at their stars, and rising stars:
ReplyDeleteJim DeMented, and Nikki Halley, from SC - one's a god-bothering loon, and the other's basically a talking point spewing moron who shouldn't be allowed to 'govern' a Sarah Palin Fan Club.
Paul Ryan and Scott Walker. Ryan would have looked great in a Waffen SS uniform - and he wants to exterminate all grandparents, poor, and sick people.
And Walker looks like some serial-killer of young men.
Chris Christie - A man who makes Taft look svelt, with the temper of Joe's Pesci's character in "Good Fellows."
And it's never a good idea to have a candidate who needs a crane to get him to the podium.
And the whole next tier below them is rife with loons, whacko's, grifters, and other assorted sociopaths.
Marco Rubio's starting to look like Sarah Palins Hispanic half-brother.
The only semi-repectable one on their side, is Jeb Bush - and he's an economic monster, who'd be glad to pull every safety net program apart, same as the rest of the sociopaths.
And he's THE SMART ONE in that generation of the Bush Crime Family.
But don't worry.
If Mitt loses, it won't be that Conservatism failed.
No, Mitt will have failed Conservatism!
And, there's no end of candidates who'll be willing to 'double-down' on Ryan's and Romney's plans, to get that nomination in 2016.
Conservatism, and it's physical political entity, the Republican Party, needs to be disgraced to the point of extermination sometime in the near future, or one of these god-bothering, semi-literate, sociopaths will destroy this country - and maybe the world.
And, that could start to happen in January of 2013, if Mitt wins, and there's a R Congress.
Well, yes.
ReplyDeleteLet's hope more voters see it the same way, every day.
The one ace that Romney has left,- the one any GOP nominee would still have left, is the low-info voter notion that if the economy isn't satisfactory, it's mostly on the guy in charge at the time, no matter what. And the more that Repubs get away with playing obstructo-ball on Capitol Hill -- it's anyone's guess whether a second-term Obama would be less annoyingly "post-partisan" and more effective in using executive privilege and the bully pulpit -- the more vulnerable that Democrats will be to voter ennui and impatience. Particularly with someone who lacks Obama's smooth. The Democrats have done a good job thus far in tying the hapless Romney to the failures of the Bush years, but they won't be able to make those kind of attacks forever.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Victor that the GOP bench looks pretty weak right now. But if Citizens United is about anything, it's about further ensuring corporatist power possibility for the future. And again, I'd look out in the future for the "happy empowered King Gangsta" notion gaining traction, with the right packaging. Remember Bill Clinton's observation: When people feel uncertain, they'd rather have somebody that's strong and wrong than somebody who's weak and right.
Ed Gillespie explains Mitt's 'Bain in the ass' problem:
ReplyDeleteHe'd' "Retired Retroactively!"
"He actually retired retroactively at that point. He ended up not going back to the firm after his time in Salt Lake City. So he was actually retired from Bain."
Too bad Dick Nixon didn't have people like Ed the spincter-licker working for him - or, at least better ones than Tricky Dick had at the time.
"Retroactive Retirement!"
LOL!!!
Too bad Ol' OJ's still in prison, or he could be scouring the countryside, looking to find "The Real Person Who Ran Bain!"
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ReplyDeleteNice pitch!
May I assume you're a major foreign contributor to Mitt Romney's Presidential campaign?
Sounds like your kinda man!
Or has he has been, all along?
Victor, why suppose GS is even human? Surely he's some sort of e-bot?
ReplyDeleteOh, I know.
ReplyDeleteI just did it for the Hell of it.
I usually delete the spam comments, but this one just seems so apropos.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone remember 2000 election?
ReplyDeleteWe here in Florida still hear about the hanging chad.
With all of the voters who are not going to be able to vote I would not worry about Mittens losing..
By hook or by crook is the motto of his contributors.
The one ace that Romney has left,- the one any GOP nominee would still have left, is the low-info voter notion that if the economy isn't satisfactory, it's mostly on the guy in charge at the time, no matter what. And the more that Repubs get away with playing obstructo-ball on Capitol Hill -- it's anyone's guess whether a second-term Obama would be less annoyingly "post-partisan" and more effective in using executive privilege and the bully pulpit -- the more vulnerable that Democrats will be to voter ennui and impatience. Particularly with someone who lacks Obama's smooth. The Democrats have done a good job thus far in tying the hapless Romney to the failures of the Bush years, but they won't be able to make those kind of attacks forever.
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